Giddens Ko is responsible for some of the best works we have seen coming out from Taiwan during the last decade, with “You are the Apple of My Eye”, “Mon Mon Mon Monsters” and “The Tenants Downstairs” being the most prominent samples. For his latest work, “Miss Shampoo”, he tries his hand in an intense genre mashup that includes elements of crime, comedy, romance and drama.
Miss Shampoo is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
East Asian humor frequently has to do with hair, and so having an (assistant) hairdresser as the protagonist seems a good idea for the comedy aspect. This is Fen, who apprentices in a hair salon when, one stormy night, Tai, a wounded gang underboss, rushes into the shop, stabbed, in order to avoid his pursuers. Fen does not give him away, and Tai, who has become the boss of his gang after the former one was murdered, is set to return the favor by having all the members of his crew getting haircuts in the salon. The results are expectedly tragicomical, as is the fact that the two youths soon start dating, after Tai’s insistence. They even fall in love, but their relationship, despite the encouragement of her family and his “family” is not without bumps, as her love for baseball, his criminal activities, and the fact that the people who tried to kill him are still on his heels, loom above the couple. Plus, there is the whole issue with sex.
Allow me to start with the negatives here. Maybe with the exception of the haircuts, which is quite funny seeing all those brutes bolstering coiffure that can only be described as absurdly flamboyant, the humor lingers somewhere between the crude (the whole concept of where Tai’s penis belongs too) and the pedantic (in a number of instances), in an approach that seems “too local” on occasion. Secondly, the genre mashup results in too many characters and episodes, with the baseball one in particular being the least necessary and essentially barely connected with the rest of the story in the most forced fashion.
Apart from these issues, though, the movie is quite fun. The romance between the two unlikely lovers is both hilarious and interesting, with the combination of drama and romance being well implemented throughout, and the back and forths between the two protagonists, rather intriguing. That the two of them almost immediately jump into a relationship also works well here, particularly since Ko avoids the cliche of the will-they-won’t they, which is so prevalent in romantic movies. This aspect also benefits the most by the acting, the charisma and the antithesis of the two, with gorgeous Vivian Sung being the smart and beautiful as Fen and Hong Yu-hong the strong and inexperienced in love, in the most appealing fashion, with the chemistry of the two carrying the movie from beginning to end.
Furthermore, the whole gang-warfare is impressively implemented, starting as a comedy about bad breath and erectile dysfunction and eventually becoming as violent as possible, while the betrayals involved add a very appealing sense of drama to the whole thing. It is also in these scenes of gang warfare and the fights between Fen and his underboss Long Legs (an also captivating Kai Ko) with their enemies, that the production values of the movie find their apogee. Hong Shi-Hao’s action direction is as brutal and dramatic as possible, particularly in the bathhouse scene, while Chou Yi-hsien’s cinematography captures the aforementioned with gusto and artistry, with his prowess actually extending to all the different settings the movie takes place in (bars, apartments, hair salons, baseball fields etc).
The job done in the coloring is also impressive, finding its apogee in the plethora of absurd haircuts and the many music-video sequences that also showcase the excellent implementation of music, while the contrast between both coloring and lighting in the romantic/comedic and the violent/dramatic sequences works excellently throughout. Milk Su’s editing results in a very fitting, quite fast pace, with the cuts occasionally being part of the humor. However, the fact that there is too much story here and that the movie somewhat overextends its welcome (it actually continues during the ending credits) are both an issue.
Apart from these, however, “Miss Shampoo” emerges as a rather fun and entertaining movie that combines the majority of its different elements artfully and in general, is quite pleasant to watch.
